George Herbert Walker Bush is the oldest living former president of the United States, and the time has come to evaluate not just his political legacy, but to rediscover what made him a great man. He is the patriarch of America’s most powerful political dynasty–but before he became President, his character was formed on the baseball field, in the cockpit of a fighter jet, on the oil fields of Texas, in corporate boardrooms, in the halls of Congress and abroad as a diplomat, at the head of the CIA, and finally as Ronald Reagan’s vice president.

Bestselling author and Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Richard Ben Cramer took the full measure of President Bush in his 1,000 page epic tome, What It Takes - one of the most influential and highly respected works of political journalism and biography of the modern era. Drawn from those pages, and compiled by Cramer shortly before he died in 2013, this book depicts the seminal moments in Bush’s life and shows their effect on the man he became. No other journalist has had the access Cramer did to Bush and his family and friends. The result is a loving portrait of President Bush that remains as fresh, relevant, and insightful as the day it was first published.